Margaret Lindsay

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Jezebel's southern Civil War-era setting and its brazen female lead make it seem a lot like Gone With the Wind, but this Bette Davis Best Actress-winner can't hold a candle to the successor which would arrive the following year. Davis is the draw here, playing a bachelorette who no one seems to be able to control -- and she of course is keen to keep it that way. The histrionics come across as quaint today, and even Davis's performance can't hold the film up all by its lonesome.

When you think of classic romantic comedy pairings, Doris Day and David Niven don't immediately spring to mind. But Niven shows an extremely soft and lighthearted side in this madcap romp, one of Day's best films from her little-seen later years in the business.

The story is really a bunch of vignettes -- as the source book was -- about a woman with four rambunctious boys and a theater critic husband, all of whom move from the city to the country in an attempt to better their lives. Hysteria ensues as Niven's critic tussles with old friends who are all playwrights, and a leading lady (Janis Paige) who alternately slaps him in the face and tries to woo a positive review out of him.

Jezebel's southern Civil War-era setting and its brazen female lead make it seem a lot like Gone With the Wind, but this Bette Davis Best Actress-winner can't hold a candle to the successor which would arrive the following year. Davis is the draw here, playing a bachelorette who no one seems to be able to control -- and she of course is keen to keep it that way. The histrionics come across as quaint today, and even Davis's performance can't hold the film up all by its lonesome.